A month ago, hundreds of teenagers ran for their lives from the hallways and classrooms of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff had been shot to death.

On Wednesday, driven by the conviction that they should never have to run from guns again, they walked.

So did their peers. In New York City, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Santa Monica; at Columbine High School and in Newtown, Conn.; and in many more cities and towns, students left school by the hundreds and the thousands at 10 a.m., sometimes in defiance of school authorities, who seemed divided and even flummoxed about how to handle their emptying classrooms.

The first major coordinated action of the student-led movement for gun control marshaled the same elements that had defined it ever since the Parkland shooting: eloquent young voices, equipped with symbolism and social media savvy, riding a resolve as yet untouched by cynicism.

“We have grown up watching more tragedies occur and continuously asking: Why?” said Kaylee Tyner, a 16-year-old junior at Columbine High School outside Denver, where 13 people were killed in 1999, inaugurating, in the public consciousness, the era of school shootings. “Why does this keep happening?”

Wreathed in symbolism, the walkouts generally lasted for 17 minutes, one for each of the Parkland victims. Two more nationwide protests are set to take place on March 24 and on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

"I'm here to fight for my life because we're scared. We never know if we're going to come back home from school." – High School Student Cindy Marquez pic.twitter.com/Ef4n3uYVdv

Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats has become something of a rarity in today’s polarized political environment—except when it comes to a select handful of objectives, like enriching Wall Street banks.

In a Twitter thread Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is calling attention to a massive bank deregulation bill (S.2155) that could reach the Senate floor for a final vote this week, and highlighted the fact that a dozen Democrats are providing crucial support for the measure.

If passed, the legislation—derisively labeled “The Bank Lobbyist Act” by Warren and other critics—would make it more difficult to combat racial discrimination by big banks, provide regulatory relief for more than two dozen of the nation’s large financial institutions, and eliminate many consumer protections put into place after the 2008 financial crisis.

As Talmon Joseph Smith observed in an article for The New Republic on Thursday, “Nine of the 12 Democrats supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or second-biggest donor.”

Earlier this week, a coalition of advocacy groups—including Rootstrikers, Public Citizen, and CREDO—delivered 450,000 petition signatures to members of Congress demanding that they reject Crapo’s measure.

“Do not collaborate with Donald Trump and Trump Republicans to deregulate big banks,” CREDO’s petition reads. “We need to finish the job of Wall Street reform and end a dangerous and rigged system that puts our economy at risk, not roll back the reforms already in place.”

The Senate should be working to #EndGunViolence. Instead, Mitch McConnell is teeing up legislation on what he thinks is a much more pressing issue: fulfilling the wish lists of big bank lobbyists. pic.twitter.com/Lwu0SOnFSc

With a speech delivered at the National Congress of American Indians on Wednesday morning, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told the gathering of Native Americans that she will not allow President Donald Trump’s racist attack on her heritage to be a smear against her, but will instead do her best to use such attacks to uplift the proud traditions—as well as the historic struggles—of North America’s indigenous tribes and communities.

Addressing directly how the president referred to her as ‘Pocahontas’ during a White House ceremony last year, Warren said that she is proud of her Native American roots.

“I’ve noticed that every time my name comes up, President Trump likes to talk about Pocahontas,” she said. “So I figured, let’s talk about Pocahontas. Not Pocahontas, the fictional character most Americans know from the movies, but Pocahontas, the Native woman who really lived, and whose real story has been passed down to so many of you through the generations.”

The mythology around Pocahontas, said Warren, is one that “has been taken away by powerful people who twisted it to serve their own purposes. The fable is used to bleach away the stain of genocide. As you know, Pocahontas’s real journey was far more remarkable — and far darker — than the myth admits.”

Why denouncing the president’s clear intent to use the name as a racist slur and a smear against her and Native Americans more broadly—with many in the right-wing media echo chamber happy to play along—Warren said she does not intend to submit to those designs.

“I’m here today to make a promise,” Warren told the audience, according to a transcript first published in the Boston Globe on Wednesday. “Every time someone brings up my family’s story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.”

With just three days left before the federal government runs out of money, congressional Democrats are divided over whether to risk a shutdown in order to force Republicans to sign on to a bipartisan immigration deal this week.

It’s the same quandary the party faced last month and twice before that. Only now, the stakes are higher and Republicans appear to be handing them some leverage.

At issue is whether to support a measure to keep the government running absent a deal to grant legal protections for the undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. Last month, Democrats punted on the matter. And with a March deadline looming for the formal end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—which protected an estimated 800,000 DREAMers from deportation—they are now facing impassioned demands from their base to take advantage of one of their few remaining pressure points.

“[President Donald Trump] said to the Republican Congress, fix it. Remember that? That’s what he said. Fix it. And it is their job to fix it. So, no, I will not be voting for any [short-term extension] that does not provide legal status to the DREAMers and a path toward citizenship,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told reporters at the Capitol.

But that sentiment is not shared universally across the party, with some lawmakers wary that Democrats would both cede the moral high ground and invite the blame.

“Historically, it’s Republicans that shut the government down and Democrats don’t want to play that,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), a progressive Democrat who is up for re-election in a state Trump won in 2016. “Every time the government shuts down or always shuts down, it’s the Tea-Party talking points and it’s threatening to shut the government down, it’s threatening to not pay our bills, threatening default—it’s what they do. Democrats absolutely don’t want to shut the government down.”

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The party’s slate of aspiring 2020 presidential candidates—notably Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—has encouraged their colleagues to adopt a more united front. And they’ve been joined by more progressive members of the party.

“There’s no reason we can’t get this done. There is one compromise that can get the votes, and it’s just up to [Republican leaders] whether they want to schedule it or not,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said, referring to the bipartisan compromise brokered last week. “And the reason they don’t want to schedule it is not because it can’t get the votes, but because it can. And they would have to do a bipartisan deal, which they are still allergic to.”

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday unveiled a massive $146 billion “Marshall plan” for Puerto Rico with several other senators. The plan includes immediate relief for the island’s cash-strapped government, billions more for economic development and renewable energy and Medicaid and Medicare parity, a key priority for the island.

“More than two months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, half of the people there—American citizens all—still have no electricity,” Sanders said at a press conference Tuesday morning.

“Many are struggling to get clean drinking water, and more than 100,000 people have left Puerto Rico alone. This is not acceptable, and we are here today to tell the people of Puerto Rico and tell the people of the Virgin Islands that they are not forgotten, they are not alone, and that we intend to do everything possible to rebuild those beautiful islands.”

The far-reaching legislation would grant $62 billion to the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, $27 billion to renovate infrastructure, and $13 billion in additional FEMA funding to rebuild the electric grid “with more modern, resilient technologies,” instead of the Stafford Act’s requirements that the grid be restored to its condition before the storms, according to a summary of the bill from Sanders’s office.

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“The bill that Senator Sanders has introduced in the United States Congress is a comprehensive plan that provides the blueprint for the transformation of Puerto Rico,” Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, said in a statement. “Senator Sanders also shows a great deal of respect and faith in us when claiming that the recovery or Puerto Rico must be in Puerto Rican hands.”

More news/video/etc. in the comments, including:

*Jealous names Susan Turnbull, a former vice chair of the DNC, as his running mate
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(Still fighting a bug in the comments, so if they do not load try clicking the ‘sort by newest/oldest’ option and they should pop-up)

Republicans want you to believe that if we give away $1.5 trillion to big corporations in their so-called tax reform bill, CEOs will raise wages and bring jobs back from overseas. But that’s not how CEOs think. Al and Elizabeth will tell you what they’ll actually do with their tax giveaways.

“We learned today from the former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile that the Clinton campaign in her view did rig the presidential nominating process by entering into an agreement to control day-to-day operations at the DNC,” Tapper said, continuing on to describe specific arms of the DNC the Clinton camp had a say over, including strategy and staffing, noting that the agreement was “entered into in August of 2015,” months before Clinton won the nomination.

Warren called that “a real problem.”

“But what we’ve got to do as Democrats now, is we’ve got to hold this party accountable,” Warren said.

The Massachusetts Democrat is seen as a possible presidential contender in 2020 and beyond.

Tapper then asked, “Do you agree with the notion that it was rigged?” And Warren responded simply: “Yes.”

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As Republicans struggle to unite on the details of their deeply unpopular tax cut legislation and brace for “all hell to break loose” once the plan finally goes public, progressive lawmakers, union leaders, and activists rallied outside of the Capitol building on Wednesday in opposition to the GOP “tax scam” and denounced President Donald Trump for attempting to push through rewards for his deep-pocketed donors at the expense of low-income and middle class Americans.

“Everything you need to know about the Republican proposal is contained in this headline by the Boston Globe two weeks ago,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a brief speech at the event. “The headline says: the Koch brothers and their friends want President Trump’s tax cut very badly. This is tax reform for the Koch brothers and the other billionaires in this country.”

The #NotOnePenny rally comes on the heels of news that the House GOP’s planned rollout of its secretive tax bill was pushed back to Thursday due to intraparty disagreements and confusion. As ABC News reported on Wednesday, Republicans can’t even agree on what to call the bill. Trump, ABC notes, is lobbying to name the legislation “The Cut Cut Cut Act.”

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For weeks, progressive organizations have been gearing up for a struggle that they have warned will be “even harder” than the fight against Trumpcare. Now that both chambers of Congress have cleared the necessary procedural hurdles by passing their respective budget resolutions—both of which called for more than a trillion dollars in cuts to key social programs—pressure to launch a resistance campaign that sparks the same grassroots intensity as the healthcare fight is beginning to mount.

“The reality is that this will be a tax bill that transfers 80 percent of the tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent,” warned Rep. Pramila Jayapal, citing a recent Tax Policy Center analysis. “We are going to kill this GOP tax plan just like we killed their healthcare bill.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) visited the storm-swept territory of Puerto Rico on Friday, where he met with Gov. Ricardo Rossello and other elected officials to discuss plans to rebuild the island in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

“The reason I am here today is to listen, and to hear from the people of Puerto Rico about how we address the immediate set of crises that the island faces short-term,” Sanders said in a press conference with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, pointing to the many residents still without access to basic necessities.

Many Puerto Ricans remain without electricity and clean water nearly one month after the island lost power following Hurricane Maria. Rossello announced on Oct. 16 that 72 percent of islanders had clean water, while 75 percent were reported to be without reliable electricity.

Sanders pointed to upcoming debate in Congress on a bill to provide more recovery funds for U.S. states and territories affected by a series of massive hurricanes this summer, which he said “will include substantially more money for Puerto Rico, for Florida, for Texas and for the the Virgin Islands.”

President Trump signed a $36.5 billion disaster relief package on Thursday that was designed to aid victims of a string of devastating hurricanes and wildfires.

Sanders called on Friday for long-term development of Puerto Rico, putting in place storm-resistant housing and structures, and a sturdy energy grid that makes use of the island’s ample renewable resources.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is backing Bernie Sanders’ plan for single-payer health care, which also goes by the name “Medicare for All.”

“There is something fundamentally wrong when one of the richest and most powerful countries on the planet can’t make sure that a person can afford to see a doctor when they’re sick,” Warren wrote in an email to supporters on Thursday. “This isn’t any way to live.”

Warren said she is co-sponsoring Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, slated to be introduced later this month, and she asked supporters to sign a petition in support of the measure.

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In her email to supporters, Warren praised the federal Affordable Care Act, noting that now insurance companies can’t deny people with pre-existing conditions and people can stay on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26 years old.

“But there’s so much more we could do right now to bring down the costs of quality health care for every American. We could start by ending health insurance company price gouging – ending high deductibles, surprise bills, and endless fights with insurance companies over coverage for critical medical procedures or out-of-pocket costs,” Warren wrote. “We could also cut the cost of prescription drugs by importing drugs from Canada, where the same prescription can sometimes cost far less than in the US.”

According to Warren, Medicare for All is “one way that we can give every single person in the country access to high quality health care.”

Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner is taking the reins of Our Revolution, the political group launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to elect progressive candidates — a move that elevates a dogged critic of the Democratic Party just as Sanders takes a bigger role in its messaging.

In a statement Thursday, Our Revolution announced that Turner would replace Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign manager and longtime strategist, who is currently serving on the party’s unity commission to reform its primaries.

“We are thankful for the work Jeff has done and look forward to his next project,” said Our Revolution board chairman and former Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen in a statement. “We’re thrilled that our board member and progressive champion Nina Turner will be our new president.”

In an accompanying video, Turner saluted OurRev’s victories since its founding. “With these hands,” she said, “we will continue to rise.”

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Our Revolution, which was founded after Sanders’s primary bid ended, has worked entirely inside the Democratic Party. It endorsed the Democrats’ candidates for special elections in Kansas and Montana long before the national party plugged money into them; its highest-profile win this year has been the election of Christine Pellegrino, a 2016 Sanders delegate, to a formerly deep-red-state legislative seat in Long Island.

But Our Revolution, a player in Democratic politics, does not limit itself to supporting one party. This year, it backed long-time Green Party activist Cheryl Honkala for a legislative race in Philadelphia where Democrats bungled their nominating process and ran no candidate; after a Democrat won as a write-in candidate, Honkala filed a lawsuit. OurRev also backed Ali Deng, a progressive city council candidate in Vermont. Sanders himself, the longest-serving independent ever to serve in Congress, has suggested that there will be times where people might do best to run outside the Democratic Party — even as he takes a major role in changing that party from within.

Elizabeth Warren has been on a campaign footing to push back against Republican efforts to bestow enormous tax breaks on millionaires and billionaires by decimating health-care coverage for ordinary Americans. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is traveling to Trump-friendly areas of her state hoping to connect with his backers and provide a road map for her party to win back working-class voters. […] Democrats, she said, would do better if they campaigned on that progressive platform rather than blurring the lines between themselves and Republicans. — WSJ Warren highlighted the lengths to which President Obama and Democrats had gone in 2009-2010 to garner Republican support …Continue reading →

Hello friends! Starting the day off with Nina Turner being excellent as always during a CNN appearance. In just a few minutes she manages to highlight the losses of the Democratic Party over the past decade and used the opportunity call for a “New Deal Remix” and an “Economic Bill Of Rights”. She also pointed out that we can’t just talk about issues but also must “be about them” using the example of the California Dem Majority Leader killing Medicare-for-All she and how neither Republicans or Russians were responsible for that.

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren hosted a Facebook Live Q&A on Monday to take questions on what the GOP’s new health care bill might mean for the average American family.

The left-leaning lawmakers noted that the Senate has not yet held a single public hearing on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) set for a vote before July 4, which Sanders called an “embarrassing, disastrous process and an embarrassing, disastrous bill.”

Sanders noted what he considers the potentially disastrous consequences of the House’s version of the bill, which passed by a slim margin last month. The Vermont independent said 23 million Americans would lose coverage under the House plan, a figure the Congressional Budget Office cited last month, and Medicaid would be cut by more than $800 billion.

“Let’s put a face on who actually takes these Medicaid dollars,” Warren said. “It’s people in nursing homes.”

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Warren, D-Massachusetts, expressed skepticism about the prospects of the House bill, suggesting that many more changes must be made and adding that the legislative process should be public. She encouraged viewers to share their own health care stories and reach out to family, friends and lawmakers across the aisle.